Canadian, 84, died in handcuffs in UK deportation centre

LONDON (AFP) - An 84-year-old Canadian man with dementia, being held in a British immigration removal centre, died in handcuffs in a hospital, a report into the deportation facility said Thursday.

Doctors had declared the man as unfit for detention or deportation but he spent nearly three weeks in the privately-run Harmondsworth centre by London Heathrow Airport.

Media reports named him as Alois Dvorzac. Medical notes said the Alzheimer's disease sufferer was frail and required social care. He was taken to hospital in handcuffs and had been in them for five hours when he died.

His death is among the "shocking cases where a sense of humanity was lost", Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) said in its report on an unannounced visit to Harmondsworth in August.